Old Crow Medicine Show

If you watch Anthony Bourdain much you might have seen the episode where he's in Sri Lanka. He mentions the heat and the crows. As I'm only 425 miles north of Colombo, one might expect the climate and birds are similar. One would be correct. Ever since I've been here I've noticed the crows. They sound so eerie. All night, all day, they caw and it's loud. Given that I come from East TN and that crows are considered a nuisance, they are scavengers and carriers of certain viruses (West Nile for example). I was wondering why so many crows and started to think about it. All things being held equal it makes sense. There is a lot to scavenge here. Moving back into the issue of population for moment; there's an interesting phenomenon occurring in India concerning food and waste. India, based on it's natural settings is one of the world most abundant places based on food considerations alone. The amount of available tropical fruit is completely absurd. Fresh coconuts sell for something like 10Rs a piece. There are (supposedly) 26 varities of bananas here, as well as guavas, papaya, mangos, pineapples. They are everywhere. India, in addition has a far north, in which the Himalayas partly rest. From there plenty of varieties of spices and rice grow. In short, India has completely abundant food for a country of its size. What then is then problem?

India's problem with distributing this food is that the techniques of storage are not up to par. Most, and I mean a vast majority of the fresh food goes to waste. This, does not include the fruit that simply falls from the tree and rots, that's not wasteful. I'm talking about the coconut vendor who has 300 kg of coconuts to sell, and he sells 30 kg. It's the same way with almost all fruit vendors, at least in chennai. Then what happens? That food is thrown out somewhere. The food goes to waste and who/what eats it? Dogs who are otherwise starving, cows, pigs, chickens, goats. Any non-domesticated animals. They eat this thrown out fruit with whatever else is around it. I guess I don't need to mention, a lot of these animals die of starvation. If you were just to see India yourself, you'd understand the sheer magnitude of starvation and death on all animal levels. Well, I guess this is where the carnivorous scavengers come in to play. Crows, lots of them, loud obnoxious crows. It's not simply that they are present, it's what they represent that is so alarming. In many ways they represent death. And around these parts, that's a very common phenomenon.